This chapter offers a case study of a single dispute over a church advocacy. In 1225, members of the entourage of Count Frederick of Isenberg attacked and killed Archbishop Engelbert of Cologne. Sources written at the time all agree that the reason for this assassination was a dispute between the count and the archbishop over the advocacy for the convent of Essen. Count Frederick had inherited the advocacy and considered it an important source of income and prestige, but Archbishop Engelbert – in whose archdiocese Essen was located – also sought control of the advocacy. The conflict between them ties together many of the themes of the preceding four chapters, including the issues of advocatial violence, forgery, royal and papal intervention in disputes and the importance of the profits accrued from holding an advocacy.

The relics of the Magi who had visited the infant Jesus were enshrined at the cathedral at Cologne in the twelfth century, where they became an important focus of pilgrimage. The cult was widespread and diverse in form, and was especially focused on the season of Epiphany; devotional practices included formal liturgical rites, representative drama, and the invocation of the Magi in medical remedies. This chapter considers the relationship between such categories as devotional and liturgical in relation to examples of the cult in Insular sources. In particular, the presence of a votive Mass for Travellers of the Three Kings of Cologne, as found in a fifteenth-century manuscript belonging to priest Henry Wells, presents an opportunity to consider individuals for whom the cult held particular significance.